It’s my friend’s birthday today. She is, hmm let me think, 6 years older than me. That makes her 63. I can still remember her at 18, a tall slim beauty. A photographer wanted her as a model. She said no. She could have been a ramp model, too. There weren’t many, if any, talent scouts in our provincial city in the 1970s. I wonder if there are any now. She had always been beautiful, in my eyes at least. Heads turned where she went. She was always in style or even avant-garde. Once, her fingernails were painted 5 different colors, each one had a horizontal layer of green, then white, then blue, then pink, then fuschia. She could carry off things like that. She wore bright flowery gowns, yes, long gowns, cotton yes, but long gowns to college. Thick make-up: pre-foundation, foundation, blush-on, powder, eyes-shadow, mascara, the works! On others it looked cheap or contrived. Not on her.

Her hair was always in the latest style. I remember the layered look which framed her face to perfection. She could get away with anything. Because she was beautiful. Men, because well, they were men. Women, because she intimidated them. Not because she was unkind but because she was beautiful. There is this awe, this wonder, this deep down wish to be like her and somehow catering to her made one beautiful, too. Or at least shared in her beauty. Even if it were for a moment. So doors opened for her, literally. And she got the best service at hotels where receptionists ran to do her bidding; at the beauty parlor, where the hairdresser considered it a privilege to cut and style her hair and the manicurist and pedicurist took the tiniest hint of a cuticle from each finger and toe; at restaurants where the best table always managed to be free when she swept through their doors.

Boyfriends, she wrapped around her little finger. One didn’t want her to cut her layered shoulder-length hair. He came to pick her up onet day and you could see the nape of her neck. She had cut her hair short. He was speechless, then furious, then resigned. A rueful smile, a shake of the head. And with that, she took it off, the wig of short hair, and shook the pins out of her hair. Well, not quite like in the movies, because she had asked the hairdresser to do it for her and she had been very careful to pin up her long hair in little flat curls. Her laugh rang out as he came after her, all smiles.

Only one man did not run after her. Gave her a hard time. Seemed at first impervious to her charms. Although he would fly to our provincial city for a weekend and watch a movie with her, take her out to dinner, then go back home to his place. Within six months they were married. And he never went to a single movie with her again. Forty years down the road, she plays bridge; he plays polo. They share the same house. And that’s all they share.